Telecommunications networks have developed from connection-oriented, circuit-switched (CO-CS) systems, e.g., such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN), utilizing constant bit-rate, predefined point-to-point connections to connectionless, packet-switched (CNLS) systems, such as the Internet, utilizing dynamically configured routes characterized by one or more communication channels divided into arbitrary numbers of variable bit-rate channels. With the increase in demand for broadband communications and services, telecommunications service providers are beginning to integrate long-distance, large-capacity optical communication networks with these traditional CO-CS and CNLS systems. Typically, these optical communication networks utilize multiplexing transport techniques, such as time-division multiplexing (TDM), wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), and the like, for transmitting information over optical fibers. However, an increase in demand for more flexible, resilient transport is driving optical communication networks toward high-speed, large-capacity packet-switching transmission techniques, wherein switching and transport functions occur in optical states via one or more packets.
Such optical communication networks can experience significant fluctuations in traffic due to many factors, such as increases or decreases in the number of customers allocated to use the network and/or components of the network, changes in the structure of the network that increase or decrease capacity of the network and/or of components of the network, and fluctuations in usage that can be somewhat predictable or cyclical in nature, as well as random or bursty in nature. Typically, if the amount of traffic attempting to use resources of the optical communication network allocated thereto exceeds the capacity of the allocated resources, then excess data will be lost until the situation is resolved.
Hence, with these broadband systems, despite the availability of large amounts of bandwidth, poor bandwidth management can result in the inefficient use of bandwidth. Traditional systems allocate bandwidth at regular time intervals to reflect traffic fluctuations. In such static systems, a situation can arise where, as the bandwidth increases during a normal day, traffic-engineered tunnels increase in size. However, there may be some sampling periods in which the bandwidth needs are momentarily diminished, resulting in an undesired decrease in bandwidth. During such time, excess traffic would be discarded (such correction cannot be made until the next time interval).
Therefore, there is a need for an approach that adjusts bandwidth allocations in response to traffic fluctuations.